FOI003660 FOI Benefits

Please treat this email as a formal request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I am requesting information concerning the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead's Crisis and Resilience Fund from the 01/04/2026 the date which the Fund commenced/was established up to the date of today 01/10/2026.

For the avoidance of doubt, this request seeks aggregate, anonymised and non-personal information only.

I am not requesting information that would identify individual applicants.

I would be grateful if this request could be formally logged as an FOI request and allocated an FOI reference number.

If this mailbox is not the Council's designated FOI mailbox, please forward the request to the appropriate FOI function rather than requiring me to resubmit it. Please confirm the FOI reference number and the date on which the statutory response period begins.

1. Applications received

Please provide the total number of applications received by the Fund from 01/042026 to 01/10/2026.

Where the information is held in a form that permits it, please additionally provide the number received:

a) by calendar month; and/or
b) by financial year.

Please also provide the number of applications recorded under each application/category/reason-for-assistance classification used by the Council.

2. Initial decisions

Please provide the total number of applications which, during the requested period, were:

a) approved;
b) rejected/refused;
c) approved in full;
d) approved in part;
e) withdrawn;
f) cancelled;
g) closed without a substantive decision; and
h) still outstanding, where such a status is recorded.

Please provide these figures by financial year where this information is readily available.

3. Rejected applications

Please provide the number of rejected/refused applications associated with each refusal/rejection reason or category recorded in the Council's systems.

Please provide the Council's actual recorded categories and terminology, rather than requiring the Council to create new classifications.

Where the Council records separate reasons relating to any of the following, please provide the corresponding numbers:

a) income;
b) expenditure;
c) savings/capital;
d) Universal Credit;
e) benefit cap;
f) housing/rent;
g) insufficient evidence;
h) eligibility criteria;
i) crisis/emergency threshold;
j) available resources;
k) ability to meet the identified need;
l) longer-term affordability; and
m) any other recorded reason.

If these matters are not separately recorded, please state that they are not separately recorded.

4. Reconsiderations

Please provide:

a) total reconsideration requests received;
b) total applications reconsidered;
c) number where the original decision was upheld;
d) number where the original decision was overturned;
e) number where reconsideration resulted in approval;
f) number where reconsideration resulted in refusal;
g) number resulting in partial approval;
h) number resulting in an increased award;
i) number resulting in a reduced award, if applicable; and
j) number of reconsiderations outstanding.

Please provide these figures by financial year where readily available.

5. Reasons for reconsideration

Please provide the Council's recorded categories/reasons for reconsideration requests and the number of reconsiderations falling within each category.

Please also provide the recorded categories/reasons for decisions following reconsideration.

6. Financial information

Please provide, for each financial year since inception:

a) the budget allocated to the Fund;
b) the total amount awarded;
c) the total amount actually paid;
d) the number of awards made;
e) the average award, if calculated;
f) the median award, if calculated;
g) the minimum award, if recorded; and
h) the maximum award, if recorded.

If the Council does not routinely calculate one of these statistics, please state that it is not held rather than creating a new calculation.

7. Purpose of awards

Where recorded, please provide the number and/or value of awards made for each category of need used by the Council, including where applicable:

a) food/basic living costs;
b) energy/utilities;
c) rent/housing costs;
d) emergency accommodation;
e) essential household items;
f) emergency expenses; and
g) other recorded categories.

8. Eligibility and assessment criteria

Please provide copies of the versions of the following documents applicable to the Fund since its inception:

a) the Fund policy;
b) eligibility criteria;
c) application guidance;
d) assessment guidance;
e) decision-making guidance;
f) reconsideration/review guidance;
g) financial assessment methodology; and
h) any guidance concerning income, expenditure, savings, capital, Universal Credit, benefit-cap circumstances, housing/rent costs, crisis situations or longer-term affordability.

For each document, please identify its effective date/version where this information is held.

Where a document is already publicly available, please provide its title, date and direct webpage/document location.

9. Changes to the Fund

Please provide a chronology of material changes to the Fund since inception.

For each material change, please provide, where recorded:

a) date of change;
b) description of change;
c) previous criterion/procedure;
d) new criterion/procedure; and
e) the relevant report, decision record, committee paper, Cabinet paper or other recorded document explaining or authorising the change.

10. Governance and monitoring

Please provide copies of, or links to, existing reports concerning the operation or performance of the Fund, including where held:

a) performance reports;
b) monitoring reports;
c) Cabinet/committee reports;
d) internal reviews;
e) evaluations;
f) equality impact assessments;
g) internal audit reports;
h) reports concerning demand;
i) reports concerning rejected applications;
j) reports concerning reconsiderations;
k) reports concerning unmet need; and
l) reports concerning available funding or demand exceeding available funding.

I am requesting existing recorded documents and do not require the Council to create a new report.

11. Complaints and challenges

Please provide aggregate, anonymised figures for complaints concerning the Crisis and Resilience Fund, including where recorded:

a) total complaints;
b) complaints upheld;
c) complaints partially upheld;
d) complaints not upheld;
e) complaints concerning eligibility;
f) complaints concerning refusal decisions;
g) complaints concerning reconsideration decisions;
h) complaints escalated to a further stage; and
i) complaints referred to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Please provide the Council's recorded complaint categories/reasons where available.

12. Decision-making structure

Please provide, where recorded and without disclosing personal data:

a) the job title/role responsible for assessing applications;
b) the job title/role responsible for making initial decisions;
c) the job title/role responsible for reconsiderations;
d) any documented scheme of delegation applicable to the Fund; and
e) any documented decision-making or award thresholds applicable to officers.

13. Definitions and application statuses

Please provide the definitions or status categories used within the Council's records for:

a) application received;
b) approved;
c) approved in part;
d) rejected/refused;
e) reconsideration;
f) reconsideration approved;
g) reconsideration rejected;
h) withdrawn;
i) cancelled; and
j) closed.

If the Council uses different terminology, please provide the actual terminology used.

14. Existing electronic data

Where the requested information is held electronically in a database, spreadsheet or other structured system, please provide the relevant aggregate data in a machine-readable format such as CSV or XLSX where reasonably practicable.

I am not asking the Council to create a new database or undertake disproportionate analysis.

Where a requested figure is not routinely reported but can be obtained by a straightforward search, filter, export or calculation from existing electronic records, please provide it where reasonably practicable.

15. Applicant demographics and household characteristics

Where a particular demographic breakdown is not held, please state that it is not held rather than creating a new dataset.

Where the Council does not routinely produce a particular cross-tabulation, I am not asking the Council to undertake a disproportionate analysis or create a new database. However, where the underlying aggregate fields are already held electronically and can be combined or filtered by a straightforward search, query, export or calculation, please provide the resulting aggregate figures where reasonably practicable. If the requested cross-tabulation cannot be produced from the information already held, please provide the underlying aggregate figures that are held for the relevant fields and explain which cross-tabulation is not available.

Please provide aggregate and anonymised demographic information concerning applicants to the Crisis and Resilience Fund for the period 1 April 2026 to the date of your response, where such information is held and recorded.

Please provide the number of applications, and where reasonably practicable the number approved and rejected, broken down by the demographic or household characteristics recorded by the Council, including:

a) household composition;

b) single-person households;

c) single-adult households;

d) single-adult households with dependent children;

e) couples without dependent children;

f) couples with dependent children;

g) households with one or more dependent children;

h) number of dependent children, where recorded;

i) age band of applicant;

j) sex/gender of applicant, where recorded;

k) disability status, where recorded;

l) employment status, where recorded;

m) Universal Credit claimant status;

n) benefit-cap status, where recorded;

o) housing tenure, including private rented, social rented, owner-occupier and other recorded categories;

p) homelessness or threatened homelessness status, where recorded;

q) household income band, where recorded; and

r) any other demographic or household characteristic routinely collected as part of the Crisis and Resilience Fund application or assessment process.

In particular, please provide the number of applications made by single adult men, where this information can be identified from the Council's existing records without creating or disclosing personal data.

Where the Council records sex/gender and household composition as separate fields but does not routinely produce a "single adult man" category, please provide the underlying aggregate figures for those two fields instead, where reasonably practicable.

For each demographic category, please provide application outcomes where held, including:

• applications received;
• applications approved;
• applications rejected/refused;
• applications approved in part;
• reconsiderations requested;
• reconsiderations approved; and
• reconsiderations rejected.

Please provide the Council's existing categories and definitions where these differ from the categories above.

I am requesting aggregate/anonymised information only. No names, addresses, application references, dates of birth, or other information capable of identifying individual applicants is requested.

If a particular demographic breakdown is not held, please state that it is not held rather than refusing the request or creating a new dataset.

Where disclosure of a detailed breakdown could potentially risk identification because of very small numbers, please provide the figures using an appropriate aggregated category or suppression method rather than withholding the entire demographic section.

16. Information not held or exemptions

If any requested information is not held, please identify the specific item and confirm that the Council does not hold it.

If any information is considered exempt from disclosure, please:

a) identify the specific FOIA exemption relied upon;
b) explain how the exemption applies to the requested information;
c) where applicable, provide the public-interest reasoning; and
d) disclose all non-exempt information that can reasonably be separated from the exempt material.

Please do not withhold an entire document where only part of it is exempt.

If you consider that any part of this request exceeds the appropriate cost limit, please provide the required advice and assistance identifying how that particular part could be refined so that it can be answered within the statutory limit. Please answer the remaining parts of the request wherever possible rather than treating the request as a whole as refused.

17. Clarification

I have intentionally separated the request into numbered sections so that individual parts can be answered independently.

If you consider clarification necessary for any particular item, please identify the specific item concerned and explain what clarification is required. Please do not treat the entire request as requiring clarification where only one particular item may require it.

This request is for aggregate and anonymised information only and does not seek personal data concerning individual applicants.